Nobody likes to shoulder blame—and it appears that's particularly true of Microsoft. Ballmer and co have admitted that a series of targeted attacks have been carried out, clearly based on findings published in a Google researcher's recent report.

Microsoft says that hackers have launched "targeted attacks" by exploiting a bug in Windows that was first brought to light two months ago by a Google employee. The employee published his findings without approaching Microsoft first.

It was, arguably, a fairly controversial move: the engineer, Tavis Ormand, posted technical details online, which, at the time, experts claimed could help hackers launch attacks. Turned out they were right. While Microsoft hasn't directly blamed Ormand, it's clear that the security breach is a result of the report.

Microsoft hasn't gone into much detail about the attacks—but, hey, at least it has all the technical details it needs to work through the problem. [Guardian]